I understand why the trade was made by this current management/coaching staff, but it again highlights why I'm not a big fan of those making the decisions right now. The Leafs traded him because A) they don't have enough cap space to carry a 23rd or even 22nd roster player and B) because they would rather have McLaren and Orr on the roster instead of him. Both of those reasons are pretty embarrassing if you ask me.
Colborne would have been a perfect 12/13/14th forward right now. He re-signed to a contract that was considerably less than what his qualifying offer would have been because a lower cap his would have meant a better chance of cracking the NHL roster. It was a very shrewd moved by he and his agent. In the end it didn't help but he did get a trade to his hometown so I'm sure he's not really complaining. Aside from his cheap contract, he's also the type of player who can fill in on pretty much any line in the NHL. Obviously, he would be less successful on the 1st or 2nd lines at the moment than he would be on the 3rd or 4th, but he had a lot more versatility than most spare forwards would have.
With the signing of Raymond it meant that any chance he had on the 3rd line was gone and with Carlyle's intention to play McLaren and Orr on the 4th line it meant best case scenario Colborne was stuck in the pressbox to start the season. Like I said, there was much worse players than Colborne to have as your 13th forward. But an injury to McLaren and a suspension to Clarkson meant that there were two openings that could be grabbed. While I fully admit that Colborne didn't exactly stand out during preseason, aside from their ability to drop the gloves I don't really think Ashton, Devane, Broll, or Bodie did either. But alas they are the guys that the Leafs will chose from to fill up their roster. Not the guy with more skill and potential than possibly all four of those players put together.
But I get it, from this organizations point of view Colborne was either going on waivers or had to be traded. I said before I would have liked to see Colborne moved with Liles in order to gain some cap space at least, but it's looking like Liles' contract is pretty much unmovable at this point. Another option would have been to move Colborne for a similar player, but that similar player likely wouldn't have had a spot on this team either. So a draft pick was the only way to go and you probably weren't getting much more than a 4th.